"It feels evil!" This is something people tell me all the time regarding their spirit activity.

I talk to so many people every year who call or write to me asking for help, information or advice on some paranormal activity they feel they are experiencing. During these conversations I hear many of the same things, again and again. Many times the client will tell me "I think it's evil." I ask why they think that and they say things like "I feel it." "I can just tell by the way it makes me feel." "It's dark, like a shadow." Then I will ask if anyone else in the house has experienced this and feels the same way. Usually I will get a response similar to this one "Well, I told my mother about it so my mother came over and she felt it too, or my daughter feels it too." After 36 years doing this I am never quick to jump to any immediate conclusion as to the nature of a spirit presence. This is because I have learned a lot about spirit interactions and also about how the living perceive them. The way we feel about any paranormal interaction or experience depends largely on how we perceive such things in the first place.

Most people find it an uncomfortable and frightening experience as they have never dealt with it before. Others may find it terrifying because of some other experience they had as a child or perceived to have had. What it comes down to is that most of us are conditioned to fear such things and our minds and even our bodies react accordingly. When we are afraid we feel threatened and we classify things that threaten us as evil. Considering all this, I know that most of the time people's initial reaction is not necessarily the right one. I have heard this same claim "I feel it, I know it's evil." from so many people just to investigate their case and find a relative or some other benign spirit present in their home that meant no harm whatsoever. When the client witnesses this and hears the voice of the spirit on our computer as we communicate they are often shocked at how wrong their initial reaction was. We all have intuition and some degree of sentient ability but most people do not know those impressions from the impressions of our own fear based reactions. They assume that if they "feel it" it must be right.

Most people who are experiencing a benign haunting think the activity in their home is evil, but they have not really ever experienced a truly "Evil haunting" to know the difference. They think that the door closing on it's own or the shadow seen from the corner of their eye is just over the top. Events like those are very common and at times they are not even paranormal. Benign hauntings produce some impressive activity at times but even then, it is not activity that is conducive to anything evil. Often people even relate other things to the supposed spirit haunting that are commonplace. For example: "I woke up with scratches on my arm and my side" Every single human being scratches in their sleep every night...."every night." If you know this simple fact then scratch marks on your body upon waking are not anything to panic about, but when someone thinks they are haunted the scratches suddenly become an attack by said spirit. TV shows encourage this misconception far too often because they need something to make their show scary and will use anything as evidence of the supposed evil spirit. Sometimes a client will tell me they feel the presence and it feels evil but when I ask about other activity they say there is none, it is just a feeling. Many folks nowadays have no clue about all the things that affect the way we "feel" and that produce false sensations that we sometimes misconstrue as a spirit interaction. An ungrounded fuse box, or wire can put off emf that can make you feel afraid ,disoriented, nervous and even at times produce nerve sensations we feel physically. Wifi signals can also mess with our heads and our bodies n strange ways. Insomnia and the feeling that your brain just won't shut down is often caused by Wifi signals in your home or in your bedroom. Now more than ever we have a host of medications that cause strange feelings and have a myriad of side affects which can also produce feelings of dread, fear, etc. The best rule of thumb when you think you are feeling something out of the ordinary is to remain calm and rational and explore all possibilities for this feeling. Far too often people jump to the conclusion of an evil spirit presence, when in reality it may be something entirely different that caused the feelings.

Another thing that causes us to jump to the "It feels evil" reaction is past experiences, especially fears from childhood. Many people have had a childhood brush with something that went bump in the night and depending on how traumatic that was, it can stay with you. It stays in our sub-conscious and when we experience anything remotely strange or uncomfortable that fear rises right up to the surface again. Just like the cat that was bitten once by a snake that now fears even rope, we are reacting in an extreme manner to something that may not be as threatening as we think it is. In order to conquer fear we have to change the way we look at this type of experience. Most spirits are not out to get you, in fact most of them are not even haunting us at all. Spirits pass through spaces all the time and sometimes the circumstances are just right for us to cross paths with them. Sometimes we get a glimpse of something or hear something, but the event may be transient . Most times the spirit just keeps going on it's way. Sometimes the spirit is not even aware of you much less haunting you.

There are many articles at this site about hauntings and the earmarks of hauntings. Read some of them and then see if you think you still have a serious problem. A door that closes or a TV that turns off can have many natural causes. Houses make noises on their own sometimes and the light plays tricks on us at times. Those muffled voices just might be your neighbor's TV set. Always look for the calm and rational explanation before jumping to the most unlikely. Remember...the most common cause of that "It feels evil" sensation is our own conditioned fear. If you truly have an evil spirit in your home you will experience things that make the closing door seem like absolutely nothing. Truly evil spirits love to put on quite a show and they usually go for extreme scare tactics and at times will even physically attack people. This happens so rarely. Chances are the only time you will see this kind of thing is in the movies and on silly ghost TV shows which are both embellished to the point of ridiculousness. If this stuff scares you then don't watch the movies and the TV shows that will feed that fear and make you more likely to dwell on these things. If you consult a seasoned haunts researcher and they try to explain some things to you that are not necessarily paranormal, don't get mad at them and refuse to listen. The person you are consulting, if they have real experience knows a lot more than you do and is trying to help you and also offer some education on the whole subject. Isn't that why you consulted them in the first place? Even with a real haunting you have to be willing to listen and learn and work with whoever you bring in to help if you want to resolve anything. Remember this also: the people you see on TV shows are often just actors, making a show for entertainment. The real researcher with years in the field knows more than the "supposed" experts on embellished TV shows. Get your help and information from those who are really out there in the field and have been for years and years, not from some young hokey actor or actress on TV, or some fake psychic medium on TV.